But even with a faerie-wrought blade, Severin would die. Even were he the best swordsman in the world, he would die. No skill could guard against a blade that never missed. If Hazel couldn’t get him Heartsworn, he was doomed.
She found what she thought might be the shine of the bottom of a pommel and dropped to her knees. Fingers sliding over it, she tried to get a grip, tried to pull it up. It slipped from her fingers. No one had noticed her yet, crouched there, but they would, surely. She had to work quickly.
On the other side of the floor, Severin and his father circled each other. Heartseeker darted out toward Severin’s shoulder. The horned boy tried to block the blow, but the other sword was too fast. It sank into his arm, making him cry out. His grip on his own sword wavered. Metal rang against metal in a flurry of furious blows. Severin couldn’t block swiftly enough. Again and again, Heartseeker sliced into his flesh. Already wounded, he quickly became a mess of small cuts, bleeding freely.
And yet, Hazel could tell the Alderking was frustrated. Severin was clearly the better swordsman. The Alderking was constantly thrown off his balance by his own sword; it jerked him into the position it needed to strike. He dealt sloppy blows, blows that went wide and then corrected themselves. And Severin continued on, relentlessly parrying, ferociously striking, even when there was no hope of winning out, even when his defeat was assured. The Alderking might be able to kill him, but he could not break him.
“As amusing as this is,” said the Alderking, out of breath, “it cannot continue. Subside. Your sister is coming. She will rip you limb from limb if I don’t cut your throat first. Either way, this time when you lie in the glass coffin, you will truly be dead, dead and on display for all the rest of the forest.”
Severin slashed his blade at his father’s side and hit, slicing through fabric to show a thin line of welling blood. The Alderking looked at his son as though seeing him for the first time.
“Heartseeker means you never miss, Father,” Severin said, circling again. “It doesn’t mean I always miss you.”
The Alderking roared forward, heedless of form. Abruptly, brutally, he thrust Heartseeker into Severin’s gut. The horned boy howled and fell to his knees, hand pressed to his stomach. The Alderking had stabbed him where he was already wounded.
But as the Alderking stepped back, his hand went to his own arm. It was bleeding freely, the red wash of blood covering his hand like a glove. He’d struck his son, but Severin had dealt him another blow.
“Enough,” the Alderking shouted, breathing hard, pointing to his knights. “Finish him.”
They stood rigidly, as though they hadn’t heard the command. Because they might be cruel and capricious, might care nothing for mortals, but they were still knights, like the kind in books she’d read when she was little. Knights, like in Ben’s stories. What the Alderking was asking was against their code of honor. They did not swarm a wounded man, certainly not one who’d been so clearly beaten in no kind of fair fight.
After a moment, Marcan stepped forward. One of the others pressed a blade into his hand. They seemed to have come to the decision that though they were bound to follow the Alderking’s orders, they would do so facing Severin one-on-one, as honor demanded.
Hazel finally caught hold of the edge of the sword. She pushed her fingers deeper into the ground, as far as they would go, hooking her nail beneath the metal and insinuating her fingers until she could grip it. Carefully, she pulled the sword up, up from the stone where she’d buried it, up through the deep slice in the rock. Up until it was in her hand.
Her sword, the golden blade gleaming, black paint long chipped off. The one she’d borne on her back. The one that had made her a knight. Heartsworn.
Hardly believing what she’d done, she took several steps toward Severin, realizing in that moment that she was too late. He was bleeding too freely from too many wounds. As Marcan circled him, Severin stumbled. He was barely on his feet. He couldn’t wield the blade and win against his father, no less his fearsome sister.
She had failed. She was too late.
“Ben,” Severin called as he slumped to the ground. “Benjamin Evans, you’re wrong, but you’re not stupid.”
“What?” Ben called back from where he stood, at the edge of the cage, the broken fingers of his hands curling around the bars. His gaze flickered between Severin and Hazel, as though he wasn’t sure whom he feared for more.
“I love you,” Severin said, looking up, looking at nothing at all, his face exultant. “I love you like in the storybooks. I love you like in the ballads. I love you like a lightning bolt. I’ve loved you since the third month you came and spoke with me. I loved that you made me want to laugh. I loved the way you were kind and the way you would pause when you spoke, as though you were waiting for me to answer you. I love you and I am mocking no one when I kiss you, no one at all.”
Ben tried to move toward him, clawing at the bars of the cage, but a gleaming knight held him back. “You’re insane,” Ben shouted, and Severin started to laugh.
Hazel crossed the floor in front of the throne. She wasn’t sure if the other knights recognized what she held or if they just weren’t paying enough attention to her.
The Alderking whirled, eyes widening in surprise. Then he decided on amusement. “What are you thinking, little knight? Do you even remember how to hold a sword? Do you think you’re being honorable? He won’t be able to save you.”
“No,” Hazel said. “I’m the one who’s supposed to save him.”
He swung at her, but she’d had time to think about this. She didn’t bother aiming to block him. She aimed Heartsworn not at him, but at his sword, and swung with all her might.
Heartsworn cut the blade of Heartseeker in half with a terrible crack, like that of shattering glass. The Alderking looked at her, as though he couldn’t believe what she had done. Then his gaze went to something she couldn’t see, and he managed a smile. His expression froze Hazel in place, filling her with fresh dread.
Sorrow had come.
Courtiers had their hands pressed against their mouths, smothering small shrieks. Behind her, Hazel heard the heavy, thudding tread of the monster, heard the shiver of her branches. Hazel shuddered, taking a deep breath.
She pressed the edge of Heartsworn against the Alderking’s throat. It nicked his skin, blood beading like a single garnet where the point touched him.
“She’s coming closer, ever closer,” the Alderking said, swallowing, holding out the broken blade in one hand, as though in surrender, as though he meant to drop it. Hazel was fairly sure he wouldn’t, though. “Remember that I have the bone ring. Remember that with it, I can influence her.”
Hazel swallowed, coming to a decision.
“If you turn, you’ll have a chance,” he said. “All you have to do is turn. You have the sword. But if you don’t strike now, you’ll be hers. She’ll make you cough up dirt and vine, make you sleep in a bed of your own tears.”
There was a rush of air, like something moving very fast. Maybe the monster was pulling back to strike. Hazel knew what it was like to lose, knew it so well that it had washed the taste of winning from her mouth, so that she wasn’t sure she even remembered the savor of it.
She might be about to lose again.
Hazel thought of the creature she’d seen in the school, of the creature she’d seen the day before in Jack’s house. She thought of the strange, shambling beauty of her treelike shape, the impossibility of her. She thought of the way Ben had sung and the way the monster had let Severin touch her face.
Was Sorrow still under the Alderking’s influence? Or was she awake, conscious, no longer able to be fooled by a bit of bone?
“Go ahead,” said the Alderking. “Quick now, trust me or trust a monster?”
“Don’t—” Jack yelled, but Hazel couldn’t wait until he finished what he was going to say.
Quickly, she moved, slicing down fast, so that the very tip of Heartsworn sliced the grim bone ring in two. “I swore I would defeat the monster at the heart of the forest—and I have. It was never her. It was always you.”
It was then that the monster’s twig fingers grasped the Alderking. Astonished, his eyes went wide and he howled, calling for his knights, screaming curses. She held him and kept on holding him until his body went slack, broken sword sliding from his grasp.
Then she dropped him onto the stone floor.
Hazel bent down to take what was left of Heartseeker away. As her hand closed on the hilt, the Alderking’s eyes opened suddenly and he reached for her. The pad of his finger ran down her cheek and rasped out words from a mouth painted with blood: “Remember, Sir Hazel. Remember, my disloyal knight. I curse you to remember. I curse you to remember everything.”
“No!” Hazel cried out, shaking her head back and forth, stumbling back from him. “I don’t want to. I won’t!”
The Alderking’s eyes closed, his face smoothing out into sleep.
But Hazel kept on screaming.